Graveyard of Dreams

Every culture, it seems, needs to discover for itself that war is hell. Khaindrava's version of this aperçu is in every sense a front line bulletin: it's a b/w docu-drama about Georgia's attempts to subdue the rebellion in Abkhazia, made with real young soldiers and partly shot in the thick of battle. It starts from the eagerness of students and intellectuals to volunteer for the Georgian army and ends (with rather facile irony) with the deaths of many. Khaindrava, several times imprisoned for dissidence in USSR days, knows all about the conflict: he helped launch it when he was made Minister for Abkhazian Affairs - a post he soon quit. He should have watched Hell Is for Heroes before he took the job.